Tissue engineering is an advanced biotechnology, which cultures animal cells in vitro and applies the cultured animal cells to various fields, including the regeneration of damaged biological tissues, such as the muscular tissues and organs of a human body, the development of artificial organs, and the development of biologically active materials and stimulating agents using protein produced in the cultured animal cells.
The development of the tissue engineering satisfies the increasing demand for proteins used in genetic engineering and used to examine the functions of treatment protein, can be applied to the development of novel medicines, and enables the development of new medical techniques through the development of artificial organs, such as artificial tooth and skin, using animal cell culture techniques, thereby eventually attributing to improvements in social welfare and the quality of life. Behind the development of tissue engineering technology, bioreactors play great roles.
Generally, in accordance with accumulated results through numerous studies of the proliferation and differentiation of animal cells, factors affecting the proliferation and differentiation of animal cells largely fall into three elements playing important roles, which are chemical, electrical and mechanical stimuli.
The studies for applying chemical and electrical stimuli to promote the proliferation and differentiation of animal cells have been actively performed, and this approach has been variously applied to studies in the field of tissue engineering. However, the studies for applying mechanical stimuli to promote the proliferation and differentiation of animal cells have not been actively performed. According to several studies, it has been reported that the differentiation of cells is promoted when compressive strain is applied to the cells, while the proliferation of cells is promoted when shear strain is applied to the cells. Furthermore, there has been introduced a bioreactor that employs only a basic method of applying compressive strain corresponding to a mechanical stimulus to cells simply by adjusting water pressure in a sealed culture vessel.